"You say you love me," Achamian had cried, "and yet you still take custom. Tell me why, Esmi! Why?"
Because I knew you would leave me. All of you leave me ... all the ones I love.
"Esmi," Psammatus was saying. "Esmi. Please don't cry, my sweet. I'll return next week. I promise."
She shook her head and wiped the tears from her eyes. Said nothing.
Weeping for a man! I'm stronger than this!
Psammatus sat beside her to bind his sandals. He looked pensive, even scared. Men such as Psammatus, she knew, came to whores to escape uncomfortable passions as much as to glut them.
"Have you heard of a young priest named Inrau?" she asked, hoping to at once set him at ease and carry on a pathetic remnant of her life with Achamian.
"Yes, I have, in fact," Psammatus replied, his profile both puzzled and relieved. He's the one they say committed suicide."
The same thing the other said. News of Inrau's death had caused a great scandal in the Hagerna. "Suicide. You're certain of this?" What if it's true? What will you do then, Akka?
"I'm certain that's what they say." He turned and looked at her somberly, running a finger down her cheek. Then he stood and hooked his blue cloak - the one he used to conceal his vestments - on his arm.
"Leave the door open, would you?" Esmenet asked.
He nodded. "Well met, Esmi."
"Well met."
In the gathering shadows of evening, Esmenet stretched naked across the sheets and drowsed for a short time, her thoughts wheeling through regret after regret. Inrau's death. Achamian's flight. And as always, her daughter ... When her eyes fluttered open, a figure darkened her door. Someone waiting.
"Who are you?" she asked wearily. She cleared her throat. Without a word, the man walked to the side of her bed. He was tall, even statuesque, wearing a coal black coat over a silvered brigandine and a black tunic of crushed damask. A new customer, she thought, looking into his face with the innocence of the recently awakened. A beautiful one.
"Twelve talents," she said, leaning up from the covers. "Or a half-silver if you - "
He slapped her - hard. Esmenet's head snapped back and to the side. She fell face first from her bed.
The man cackled. "You're not a twelve-talent whore. Decidedly not."
Her ears ringing, Esmenet scrambled on all fours and threw her back against the wall.
The man sat on the end of her crude bed and began pulling off his leather gloves finger by finger. "As a matter of etiquette, one should never begin a relationship with lies, whore. It sets an unfortunate precedent."
"We have a relationship?" she asked breathlessly. The entire left side of her face was numb.
"Through a mutual acquaintance, yes." His eyes lingered on her breasts for a moment before flickering between her thighs. Esmenet allowed her knees to part a bit more, as though an accident of exhaustion.
"And who would that be?" she asked, heart hammering in her chest.
The man gazed below her navel with the shamelessness of a slave-owner. A certain mandate schoolman" - he drew his eyes up as though from a reverie - "named Druses Achamian."
Akka. You knew this would happen.
"I know him," she said cautiously, resisting the urge to once again ask the man who he was.
Don't ask questions. Ignorance is life.
Instead she said, "What do you want to know?" She let her knees drift farther apart.
Be the whore ...
"Everything," the man replied with a heavy-lidded smirk. "I want to know everything, and everyone, he has known."
"It'll cost," she said, trying to steady her voice. "Both will cost."
You must sell him.
"Why am I not surprised? Ah, business. It makes everything so straight-forward, does it not? He hummed under his breath as he rooted through his purse. Here ... Eleven copper talents. Six to betray your body, and five to betray the Schoolman." A savage grin. "A fair estimation of their relative worth, don't you think?"
A half-silver, at least," she said. "For each."
Barter ... Be the whore.
"Such conceit!" he replied, nevertheless dipping two pale fingers back into his purse. "How about one of these?"
She looked at the shining gold with frank hunger.
"It'll do," she said, her mouth dry.
The man grinned. "I imagined as much."
The coin disappeared and he began undressing, watching her with feral honesty as she hastened to light candles against the evening gloom.
When the time came, there was something animal in his proximity, a smell or heat that spoke directly to her body. He cupped her left breast in a heavy, callused hand, and any illusion she had of using his lust as a weapon evaporated. His presence was overwhelming. As he lowered her to the bed, she feared she might swoon.
Be compliant ...
He knelt before her and effortlessly pulled her raised hips and spread legs across his thighs. And she found herself aching for the moment she had feared. Then he was inside. She cried out. What's he doing to me? What's he doing -
He began moving. His mastery over her body was inhuman. Soon one gasping moment slurred into another. When he caressed her, her skin was like water, alive with shivers that rippled across her, through her. She began writhing, grinding against him with desperation, moaning through clenched teeth, drunk with nightmarish ecstacy. Through her pained eyes he seemed her burning centre, blurring into her, flooding her with rapture after rapture, thrust after thrust. Time and again, he would bring her to the ringing brink of climax, only to pause, and ask questions, endless questions ...
"And what precisely did Inrau say about Maithanet?"
"Don't stop ... Pleaase."
"What did he say?"
Tell the truth.
She remembered trying to pull his face down to her own, gasping, "Kiss me ... Kiss me."
She remembered his thick chest pressing against her breasts, and shuddering, crumbling beneath him as though made of sand.
She remembered lying still and sweaty with him, panting for air, feeling the thick throb of his heart through his member, his slightest movement like lightning between her thighs, and agonizing bliss that made her weep and groan with wild abandon.
And she remembered answering his questions with urgency of pounding hips. Anything! I would give you anything!
When she climaxed for the final time, she felt as though she'd been pitched from a precipice, and she heard her own husky shrieks as though from afar, shrill against the thunder of his dragon roar.
Then he withdrew and she felt ransacked, her limbs trembling, her skin numb and cold with sweat. Two of the candles were gutted, but the room was illuminated in grey light. How long?
He was standing above her, his godlike frame shining in the glow of the remaining candle. "Morning comes," he said.
The golden coin fluttered in his hand, bewitching her with its glitter. He held it above her and let it slip between his fingers. It plopped onto the sticky pools across her belly. She glanced down and gasped in horror.
His seed was black.
"Shush," he said, gathering his finery. Say a word of this to no one. Do you understand, whore?"
"I understand," she managed, tears now streaming.
What have I done?
She stared at the coin and the Emperor's profile across it, remote and golden against downy pubic hair and slopes of bare skin - skin threaded and smeared by glistening pitch. Bile flooded the back of her throat. The room became brighter. He's opening the shutters. But when she looked up, he was gone. She heard the arid slap of wings receding into the dawn.
Cool morning air rushed through the room, rinsing away the stench of inhuman rutting. But he smelled of myrrh.
Esmenet rolled over and vomited across the floor.